In a communication system a communication network is provided, which can link together two communication terminals so that the terminals can send information to each other in a call or other communication event. Information may include speech, text, images or video.
Modern communication systems are based on the transmission of digital signals. Analogue information such as audio or video data is input into an analogue to digital converter at the transmitter of one terminal and converted into a digital signal. The data may be captured by an input device such as a microphone or a video camera connected to the terminal. The digital signal is then encoded by an encoder and placed in data packets for transmission over a channel to the receiver of another terminal.
The manner in which the data captured by the data input device is handled by the terminal is dependent on a number of variables. For example the encoder in the terminal may encode the data differently in dependence on the data rate of the data input into the encoder, the available bandwidth of the communication network, or the available capacity of the central processing unit (CPU) in the terminal.
Adapting the manner in which data is handled at the terminal in dependence on variable conditions allows the system to optimally handle the data for given conditions.
However in some cases, optimizing the handling of data for given conditions may not necessarily give rise to the best manner for handling the data. For example an input device that consumes a large proportion of the CPU capacity may also require that data transmitted from the terminal is encoded at a high data rate. This may not be achieved if the encoding rate is dependent on the available capacity of the CPU.
It is therefore an aim of the present invention to improve the manner in which data is handled by a transmitting terminal in order to improve the quality of the transmitted signal.